All the news on the Earth's largest environment.

You will never see the Ninja Lanternshark coming, not because it’s dark and elusive, but because you won’t be swimming below 1,000 feet deep off the coast of Central America any time soon. The ...

Biologists have a habit of naming things after cool animals. Cars named after comb jellies, internet passwords after giant squid. Most of these names I recognized, but then I saw my friend’s wifi ...

Solar eclipse. From Wikimedia commons. On July 20th, 1963, three scientists sat on a research ship 200 miles south of Woods Hole, MA, waiting for something remarkable. They were nearly 4000m above the ...

A comment on Reddit reminded me of a question that I have received many times. The question is always a good one because it stems from knowledge and deductive reasoning. The said question requires one ...

Readers of DSN may think they know my favorite organism. Did you guess the giant isopod or did you guess the giant squid? Those beasties are truly fantastic. Large and dwelling in the deep oceans, ...

Magnapinna squids are one of the deep-sea more ethereal creatures. Little is known of these squid as very few have ever been captured, although over the last decade with the increased usage of ...

At a recent NOAA workshop, another participant gifted all of us these wonderful “hard hat” float ornaments. The perfect blend of nerdy oceanography and 3-D printing. Benthic Lander from NOAA To ...

Megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon) is the largest shark, at a magnificent maximum length of 18 meters (59 feet), to ever have dwelled in the oceans. We know primarily about Megalodon’s existence ...

I have only seen a hydrothermal vent once, during Dive 73 aboard the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s Doc Ricketts. Unlike many deep-sea biologists, I have always been more interested in ...

David Cassidy, 70’s heartthrob and star of The Partridge Family, died today at age 67. In November of 1970, his hit song, “I Think I love You,” was everywhere on AM radio. It’s one of the first hit ...

Like most deep-sea biologists, I have a large collection of decorated Styrofoam cups. A couple dozen line the bookshelf of my office, each displaying a rainbow of Sharpie colors. Each cup is ...